Cyro Pestana

Son of the Brazilian republican leader Augusto Pestana and great-grandson of the Italian opera singer Gaetano Ricciolini, Pestana graduated in 1919 from the National Law School of Rio de Janeiro.

[1] He began his career as a judge in the State of Rio Grande do Sul in the early 1920s.

Pestana was appointed Justice of the Rio Grande do Sul Supreme Court in 1952 and Chief Justice of the Regional Electoral Court in 1961.

[2] Pestana achieved notoriety in Brazil because of the legal procedures regarding the nationalization policies of Governor Leonel Brizola from 1959 to 1963.

The Brazilian engineer and corporate leader João Augusto Chagas Pestana (1936-2020), first Chairman of the Board of the power utility Rio Grande Energia, was his son.